Invisible, layered form protection for Django. Honeypot fields, signed timestamps, and a pluggable check pipeline.
Project description
django-formguard
Invisible form protection for Django. A pluggable check pipeline that catches bots without any user interaction.
WARNING: This library is still under development. Expect breaking changes until 1.0.0.
How It Works
FormGuard runs a series of checks against each form submission:
- Field trap - hidden honeypot field that bots fill in
- Token - signed timestamp that catches fast or tampered submissions
- JS challenge - nonce computation that requires JavaScript execution
- Interaction proof - detects real user input (accessible to screen readers)
All checks are invisible to real users. Check failures are handled as standard form validation errors, with customizable failure handling for honeypot-style silent rejection.
FormGuard is extensible. Cloudflare Turnstile is available as a contrib check, and you can write your own.
Installation
pip install django-formguard
Add 'formguard' to your INSTALLED_APPS:
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
'formguard',
]
Quick Start
1. Set up your form
Add GuardedFormMixin to your form.
from django import forms
from formguard.conf import default_checks
from formguard.forms import GuardedFormMixin
class ContactForm(GuardedFormMixin, forms.Form):
guard_checks = default_checks(exclude=['formguard.checks.InteractionCheck'])
name = forms.CharField()
email = forms.EmailField()
message = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)
default_checks() returns the built-in check list. Use include and exclude
to customize it, or omit guard_checks entirely to use all defaults.
2. Set up your template
Include {{ form.media }} in your <head> so the honeypot CSS and JS
checks load.
<head>
{{ form.media }}
</head>
<body>
<form method="post">
{% csrf_token %}
{{ form }}
<button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>
</body>
If you render fields manually, include
{{ form.guard_fields }} to add the FormGuard fields.
3. Check submissions in your view
Guard checks run inside is_valid(), so your view uses standard Django patterns.
Class-based views - use GuardedFormViewMixin:
from django.views.generic import FormView
from formguard.views import GuardedFormViewMixin
class ContactView(GuardedFormViewMixin, FormView):
form_class = ContactForm
template_name = 'contact.html'
success_url = '/thanks/'
def form_valid(self, form):
send_email(form.cleaned_data)
return super().form_valid(form)
If a check fails, the form returns an error message. To silently redirect bots to a fake success page instead, see Failure Handling.
Function-based views - see Function-Based Views
Settings
All settings are optional. Defaults work out of the box. All four built-in checks are enabled by default.
# add a custom check alongside the builtins
from formguard.conf import BUILTINS
FORMGUARD_CHECKS = BUILTINS + [
'myapp.checks.TurnstileCheck',
]
# tune the built-in checks
FORMGUARD_FIELD_TRAP_FIELD_NAME = 'website' # default
FORMGUARD_TOKEN_MIN_SECONDS = 3 # default
FORMGUARD_TOKEN_MAX_SECONDS = 3600 # default
Further Reading
- Function-Based Views - using FormGuard without class-based views
- Failure Handling - customize what happens when a guard check fails
- Configuration - per-form checks, manual rendering, settings reference
- Built-in Checks - reference for each check
- Cloudflare Turnstile - add Turnstile CAPTCHA verification
- Custom Checks - write your own checks
- Testing - test helpers for guarded forms
- Signals - hook into bot detection events
CSP Compatibility
FormGuard uses external static files for CSS and JS (no inline styles or
scripts), so it works with Content Security Policy out of the box when
'self' is in your script-src and style-src.
For strict nonce-based CSP policies, use
django-csp-helpers to add
nonces to the {{ form.media }} output.
License
This software is released under the MIT license.
Copyright (c) 2026 Luke Rogers
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
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